An interesting article on the real costs of extending unemployment benefits

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...5454431457720188.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

 

it'd be kind of fun sitting on your ass getting $450 a week for 99 weeks if you don't have a lot of expenses. maybe do odd jobs for cash to make ends meet.

 

You are so silly. If they are homeless, they don't count. DUH

I didn't read it so I can't really comment. My brain can't grasp these things very well.

 

When I worked for the Employment Dept we took a ton of surveys and one of them noted that over 80% of people receiving unemployment benefits started looking for work when they had 3 weeks left of benefits. Another survey showed that about 60% of people receiving unemployment benefits worked "under the table" so they could receive both. I'm all for unemployment benefits and I even support extensions of benefits under certain circumstances, but this length of expansion is grossly counter productive.

 

Until decent paying jobs are made available to legal citizens, unemployment benefits are all that stand between you and a home invasion.

Your call.

 

dunno. one of my brother's friends went to asia for 6 months while on unemployment. another went to europe for a month.

 

That is still the policy, but there is no time to check on the recipients.

Here's my concern- at $450/week, it equates to $11.25/hr. Plus, there are other benefits to being on unemployment assistance. When that is extended indefinitely, where is the stimulus to work? Why take a $9 or $10/hour job when one can have more not working? While I approve of extending benefits, I'd like to see them decrease every 26 weeks to give recipients more of a push to take what they can find.

Now, I realize that $450 per week is the max benefit and not everyone receives it. Many get less. But the same principle is reasonable to those making less than the max. It is unfortunate, but at some point in time the assistance has to be stopped. I know, I've lived in a car before when I was younger and I was grateful for what I got. But losing benefits got me looking hard for work- any work. I found a night janitor job, got back on my feet, got back to college and got the hell out of that car.

 

There are certainly a lot of hard working people with good skills that get laid off because of a downturn in the economy etc... but there are also people that get the boot because their jobs just are not needed anymore. If you make widgets and no one wants widgets (or China starts making them cheaper), then you may need to think about a new profession.

Jobs flow from industry to industry and at times you just have to go with the flow. I've known some friends that sat without jobs for a long time because they only wanted to do one thing... when there are a ton of jobs available in health care etc...

Check out fastest growing professions... most of them seem to be associated with health care:
http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_103.htm

 

It has to be pretty extraordinary circumstances (and I guess we did have them) but I agree in general that you should not extend benefits, and I think they should go ever further to try to help people get back on their feet.

 

When I worked for the State & Feds Clinton hatched a great plan. The workers at the Employment Office would be granted extra authority to place unemployed into technical programs while they continued to get benefits. It was the best idea we had ever seen. However, Congress shot it down in flames and the money continued to be wasted.

 

I wonder if it would be possible to use the internet to have people on unemployment audit other people's unemployment.

To get $x cash for six months, use the current system.

Alternate system: You have to maintain a blog about your job hunting/continuing education. You are also randomly assigned 12 unemployed peers, and you are required to weekly grade their blogs on a curve (three A's, three B's, three C's, three F's). They won't grade you, so there's no reciprocity. They can ask questions on their peers' blogs, offer tips, etc. On your blog you can post resumes, job applications filled out, school work, etc to prove your work. Those who average an A grade get 50% bonus. B grade 25% bonus. C grade 10% bonus. F grade no bonus. (Or maybe you adjust the grading.)

My thinking is you incentivize people to job hunt/improve themselves, and educate themselves about how others do it.

 

I've mentioned this before, but the Barro article is pretty compelling. The idea is that there are certainly jobs available. I see help wanted signs all over the place. But a reasonable person would certainly prefer to collect about the same amount and not have to go to a boring, tedious, low social status job.

I sympathize with a reasonable person in those situations, but certainly not to the extent I think it's ok for everyone else, the folks are actually out busting our asses working, to have to pay for them.

It's a strange thing in our society (and you see the sentiment in this thread) that many folks think they're "too good" to work a working class job, and yet, attach no social opprobrium to living off other peoples' money. In a better world, the folks who are most sentimental about helping the real working class folks in this country wouldn't be such snobs and wouldn't detest them so much.

 

I'm a little creeped out by the prospect of folks reporting on each other.

The best proposal I've seen would be a system under which most folks get to continue to receive their benefit for a stated duration after they become employed. Thus, you continue to help them, but you don't remove the incentive to work. So, if you get 99 weeks of unemployment, you can still get it if you get a job.

The problem with this is you will have to set up pretty strict requirements against gaming the system. Like, you can only receive unemployment benefits for one session of unemployment, and if you lose your next job, (and have chosen the lump sum plan), then you either get no unemployment or drastically reduced unemployment.

EG, if you're unemployed, then go out and get a job, you still get benefits to help you back on your feet for a couple months. However, if you lose that second job, you will get only absolutely minimal benefits the next time you apply for unemployment

 

We already do this, except it's done poorly by faceless government bureaucrats who probably haven't job-hunted themselves in decades.
I look at it as putting unemployed people immediately to work. You are auditing other unemployed people's efforts at finding a job using real world experience.

That sounds like a pretty smart system. I think you wouldn't want the government to send out the lump sum in a single payment, though. Too tempting to blow it all and then whine about being broke. Instead pay it out over the period of time.

However, as somebody who has the same employer for over a decade, I know I'd be tempted to quit and collect unemployment under such a system. Use business contacts to arrange a new employer after a month or so. Bam, I get 150% of my pay! It could be gamed....

I think that's what I like about my idea. You pay people based on effort put out as judged by others also putting effort out. It's hard to see how my system could be gamed.

 

Regardless which you do, or if there's a third even better solution, I wish the debate focused more on these alternative ideas than on "cut spending!" and "spend more!"

People get so caught up in left/right, right/wrong, that they lose sight of smart/stupid. There's a lot of stupid things our government could do more intelligently that should have little to do with ideology.

 

Except that there are people who think government should be doing little or nothing at all. These people don't live in the real world, but you can't tell them that. They think that the extra few hundred dollars in their pocket every month will be enough to replace all of the social services and safety nets that government supplies today. Or, they just don't think about that.